Day 3 - We drove 207.5 miles from Rocky Neck State Park in Connecticut to Bayley’s Camping Resort in Scarborough, Maine. It took us around 3.5 to 4 hours. We slept in to about 7:30 at Rocky Neck. It being a state park, there is no electricity or water available at the individual campsites. (I’m forming a theory that this inconvenience is key in keeping some of the complete boobs away. Plug it in and they will come.......Which actually makes these types of campgrounds VERY attractive.) The biggest issue with having no electricity is that we can’t run our awesome AC unit all night. We can make do without lights and the fridge (use coolers), but really who wants to camp out in the 90 degree heat? Well, once we got to CT (go figure), and the storms hit, the temperature dropped to a very pleasant sixty something degrees. That, coupled with no near neighbors and the exhaustion of 1000 miles in two days, and we were destined to sleep in. We got up and made some breakfast (raisin bread and squeezie applesauce) and then started our walk to the beach...again

. This time the weather was beautiful, and we had the kids ride their scooters instead of walking. On the way down the deserted old road we spotted a doe sitting 10 feet from the side of the asphalt. She just looked at us and continued to casually chew on some gras. She actually let me get pretty close to photograph her. See pic. Anyway, we made our way to the beach, via the tunnel under this weird parallel-to-the-beach railroad, and looked around for a while. There is a cool old beach community building that I wanted to explore but we ended up at the other side of the public beach area and decided the walk was not worth it. If you google Rocky Neck State Park pictures, then that is what pops up, this crazy big stone structure....well, maybe next time. Anyway, in the same manner, it seemed like a cruel joke on the kids that we took them to the beach and we weren’t going to stay, swim and play. I don’t think I or Will realized that they would really want to stay and do “the beach”. Didn’t they realize that the water was 50 degrees? Yes, and it didn’t matter. We promised them beach swimming when we got to Maine and because of this promise were able to get them out of there. We hit the road and drove through 5 states. We checked Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and then Maine off of the list. And in only 3 and 1/2 hours. This may be in my head, but when we drove into Maine I rolled down the window and immediately felt cleaner, the highway seemed less crowded, the sky was intensely blue and the clouds fluffier and whiter than I’ve ever seen

. Love. I love Maine. We made our way to Scarborough through Old Orchard Beach. I remembered that I read a bunch about Old Orchard Beach, but I couldn’t remember what the AAA book said. Wow. Old Orchard Beach, Maine is like Coney Island got together with Panama City Beach and Myrtle Beach and maybe someplace else in NJ and had a baby. I have seen no place like it in my life. Look at the pictures - I can’t even start to describe it. We spent $80 on some fair rides and $10 on parking. We ate dinner at the end of a crazy pier that I would swear served me frozen SeaPak shrimp (not complaining too much - like that shrimp too). And, we left with a very unhappy 7 year old because I wouldn’t buy him an air-brushed Pokemon tee with his name on it. We went with it and the kids, overall, had a great time. We stayed in Bayley’s Campground Resort. There are 600 sites at Bayley’s. There are 2 heated swimming pools, two hot tubs, 3 ponds, rental tackle, boats and pedal cars. They have their own general store, a restaurant, a putt-putt course and two trolleys that run shuttles to the beach and into the middle of Old Orchard Beach.The place is a well-oiled machine. Four RV’s, if not more, were checking it at any one time. Like Highlands NC, most of the labor is provided from seemingly eastern European twenty-somethings with little enthusiasm for what they are doing. (Really I don’t blame them. I felt especially bad for one super attractive girl as I watched her clean out the restrooms.) I thought the kids would love it and we would hang out and do some of the campsite’s activities but all four of us really had no desire to hang out there. We really did have a lovely site but the place was overwhelming and we (the kids too) didn’t have any desire to be around the majority of the people there. We got back from dinner and went straight to sleep. Again, more evidence for my campsite theory, that the boobometer reads higher the more added conveniences there are.